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Monthly Archives: June 2016

It was inevitable, yet no-one saw it coming. Everyone was in denial, hoping against hope that common sense would prevail. But it didn’t, and here we are, over a week after the referendum, trying to work out what’s going to happen now that Brexit’s here.

At an informal get-together of expat Brits and Americans now living in Israel a couple of days after the result had become clear there was a general consensus. The British public is too stupid for its own good. The overriding motivation leading the average Britisher to vote to leave the EU was mainly resentment of those better-off than themselves, of foreigners in general and of a pace and way of life that seems to have left them behind. What they dislike most in the world are all those ‘experts’ who cautioned against leaving the EU. The bottom line here, in my opinion, is that this reflects the massive failure of the British education system.

The arguments against leaving the EU had been clearly set out by the Remain campaign, only to be derided as ‘scaremongering’ by those who opposed it. Of course, if there was any scaremongering afoot it was coming from the other side, with dire predictions of the UK being inundated by influxes of Polish plumbers and Czech waitresses. And that’s before the hordes of Syrian, Afghan and Sudanese migrants start absailing up the White Cliffs of Dover.

“There’s too many people here now,” I heard one interviewee complain on TV, standing outside a row of neat semi-detached homes, one of which was presumably his: “Now we can’t afford to buy housing and we have to wait a week to see a doctor.” He omitted to mention the thousands of medical personnel who now man England’s severely understaffed and underfunded National Health system. In the same programme an offended Polish carpenter declared: “I qualified in my profession in Poland, came to England to work, not to live on benefits, take home the same pay as my English-born colleagues, and still they won’t even speak to me on the factory floor.”

The sad fact is that as soon as the result of the referendum became known, the value of the pound plummeted, setting off turmoil in currencies and stock markets all over the world. It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, as the saying goes, so anyone who had bet against sterling made a tidy profit. But what about all the poor sods, like the average British punter, who is left with a severely devalued pound in his or her pocket? It spells a bleak prospect for everyone, and especially for British expats living abroad and relying on a pension from the UK, of whom there are over one million.

The most telling image conveying the probable effect of Brexit on life in Britain was the picture I saw on Facebook displaying French wines and cheeses and all kinds of other delicacies stacked at one end of a table with a lone tin of baked bins at the other end. The message was clear – food and other products from abroad are going to become more expensive in England. The same goes for the holidays that British people have become accustomed to spending abroad, in search of the sun that somehow seems to avoid Britain in the summer. A wag pointed out gleefully that this means that there will be fewer British yobs on the beaches of Benidorm, and that is some consolation for those who can still afford to go. Thank goodness we still have music to soothe our spirits in this time of doom and gloom.

Scotland is talking about seceding from the UK in order to remain in the EU, while the Irish Republic, which is in the EU, may well benefit by becoming the location of choice for financial firms currently in London and seeking to continue to gain preferred access to the EU. The repercussions, implications and reverberations of all the changes arising from this momentous decision are too many and too complex to contemplate, and one can only hope that someone, somewhere is working hard to prepare plans that will help to make the process as smooth as possible.

Nevertheless, I’m very much afraid that dear old England, the country of my birth and the country which gave shelter to my parents when they were refugees back in 1938, the country which I love and to which I bear an immense debt of gratitude, is in for a rocky ride.

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Whether it was by coincidence or not, the supplement that came with the Ha’aretz newspaper last weekend contained a long article about – and interview with – Professor Telma Handler, a psychiatrist, psychologist and international expert on the brain whose most recent research has focused on the mechanism of empathy.

The terrorist attack by two Palestinians the previous evening on Israelis enjoying the evening in the Sarona area of Tel Aviv was too fresh to have triggered the interview, and then the violent attacks, in different parts of the world, came thick and fast.

The killing and wounding by a lone gunman of almost one hundred people enjoying an evening at an LGTB club in Orlando, Florida was the first event of a week of violence, followed by the stabbing murder of a police officer and his partner in France and culminating (if that’s the right term) in the savage assassination of British MP Jo Cox in her Yorkshire constituency of Birstall. Three events, each of which was shocking in its own right, combined to cast a pall of gloom over the lives of many millions of individuals, and certainly over mine.

What causes someone to take a knife and brutally butcher another human being, or fire round after round from an assault rifle at people who are dancing, enjoying a meal or returning home after a day at work? The explanation can’t be as simple as the fact that you don’t agree with their politics, sexual preferences or religion. It is true that violence has always been part of human history, with the male of the species having a greater tendency to engage in violent than women. And yet, it’s a far cry from throwing a punch or two or charging at the enemy in the framework of a military conflict to calmly mowing down people you have never even seen before.

In the article inHa’aretz we read that the lynching by members of the public in Beersheva of a migrant worker who was mistakenly thought to have been involved in a terrorist attack was what stimulated Professor Handler to study what causes us to feel empathy for one person and animosity towards another. There is, it seems, a specific part of the human brain that responds to situations of stress, anger or trauma and in so doing suppresses our sense of empathy towards the ‘other.’ In addition, the individual on his or her own reacts differently to situations than do groups, and therein lies part of the explanation. Obviously, it is easier – both physically and psychologically – to harm someone if you are in a group than if you are on your own.

But that is not the whole story. The hatred for Jews and revulsion from them as a group was cultivated assiduously by the Nazis from the moment they came to power, ultimately enabling individuals and groups to engage in the wholesale murder of six million of them. By the time that action was required the Jews were no longer regarded as human beings but rather as something sub-human, as vermin that had to be ‘exterminated.’ Killing Jews was defined as ‘cleansing’ (making Germany Judenrein) and not as murder – an action that implies a human object. Demonising and dehumanizing an individual or group tends to precede the capacity to harm them, and it is a regrettable fact that certain groups of people are taught to perceive others in that light.

Evidently education, or indoctrination, plays a key role in human behaviour, and it would be fair to say that in three of the four murderous attacks mentioned above came from Muslims of one kind or another. People say that ‘true Islam’ is a religion of peace, but the facts on the ground don’t seem to bear this out. In fact, as I sit here writing this Muslims who follow one form of that religion are busy killing other Muslims who follow another form of it, not to mention anyone who doesn’t subscribe to that religion at all. The fourth attack, which took place in a rural backwater in England, seems to have been inspired more by rabid right-wing views than religion, though perhaps they can also be regarded as a kind of religion, or at least a creed.

Calling on people to be kind to one another and make love not war isn’t going to solve anything. Nor is the banning of violence in movies and computer games. What is needed is for nations and religions to accept the concept of tolerance of different views and outlooks and incorporate it into their education system, political structure and general tenor of behaviour.

What is most badly needed is more empathy, or just simply the readiness to ‘live and let live,’ as the English tradition has it. Until this approach is accepted and promoted by every religion, creed and political view it seems we are condemned to live in an ever-more violent world.

The sudden collapse of bookshelves in Yigal’s study, fortunately without injury to life or limb, set in train a course of events (new bookcases in every room) that enabled a thorough sifting-through of books and other items collected in the course of some fifty years.

One of the most interesting objects that came to light was an envelope dating from 1987 containing several pages (typed in Hebrew by Annemarie née Oettinger) describing the events around her arrival in 1935 in the Land of Israel, then Mandatory Palestine. Annemarie was my father’s cousin, and the nine pages describe her subsequent career and life.

Although the Nazis were already in power, she was able to complete her medical studies in Hamburg in 1935 and obtain permission to leave for Palestine on board the S.S.Galilee, known as the Ship of Doctors, because there were over one hundred physicians among its passengers.

There was little work for doctors in pre-State Israel, which was beset by poverty and privation. Unable to find employment in her profession for the first four years after her arrival, Annemarie was obliged to accept all kinds of para-medical jobs, assisting in gathering and analyzing medical statistics, helping midwives and undertaking other volunteer work at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem and the Old City, as well as doing other occasional work in Haifa and Tel-Aviv.

Annemarie (who was later known by her Hebrew name, Miriam) finally found work as an independent physician in 1940, attending to the needs of Yemenite immigrants in the tiny village of Pardesiya. The place was no more than a dot on the map, surrounded by desert, whose inhabitants spoke only Arabic and a few words of Hebrew. She spoke German, English, French and a little Hebrew, so that any communication between them had to be conducted in Hebrew. For those immigrants Annemarie served as the sole link with the wider society, to the extent that it was incumbent upon her to go to the rabbi to obtain permission for the immigrants to use birth-control.

Annemarie-Miriam had brought her textbooks and some basic laboratory equipment with her from Germany, and it was on these she relied when it came to solving medical problems. Not only was there no hospital anywhere near, neither was there a paved road, any means of transportation other than a donkey, no public transport, no electricity, running water, radio, newspaper, or any other accoutrement of modern civilization.

For a young woman on her own coming from the modern German metropolis of Hamburg this must have been a culture shock of the most extreme kind. And yet she stuck out that lonely life for two years, with an occasional trip to visit her brother and his family in the Haifa region. Just reading her account of what daily life was like at that time fills one with admiration for the resilience and dedication that she displayed. But considering what was happening in those years in Germany, and afterwards in all of Europe, these hardships were still preferable.

Every now and again Annemarie-Miriam would walk the six kilometers to the nearest place of settlement to read the newspaper and borrow books from the library. That was how she met her future husband, Werner Cohn, whose father was the librarian and who also hailed originally from Germany.

Subsequently Annemarie-Miriam worked for Kupat Holim in various places, once again working primarily with Yemenite and other immigrants in the Hadera region, and retiring in 1986 at the age of 76. Annemarie proudly refers to the couple’s three sons as university graduates in technical subjects who are all employed in good jobs.

By today, thirty years after she wrote her memoir, Annemarie-Miriam is no longer with us, and her three sons have all married and produced children and grandchildren. My own contact with the family is mainly virtual, but from the various social media I know that some of them are involved in promoting social causes and coexistence (among them the Hand-in-Hand schools which were the subject of a previous post), evidently continuing the tradition of social involvement and service to the community displayed by their parents. Like many other descendants of ‘Yekkes,’ their contribution to Israeli society is an admirable credit to their forebears.

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Over ten years ago I was asked by the then editor of the AJR Journal to write a monthly column about life in Israel. There was no reference to my political views or any of the many current events which overtake us on a weekly, daily and even hourly basis. Any attempt on my part to keep up with all or any of these in my monthly column would be futile, particularly in view of the fact that the printed format of the AJR Journal requires that copy be submitted well in advance of its publication. Hence I feel somewhat hurt by being accused in a letter to the editor of writing columns that are unduly bland and do not accurately represent ‘the real’ Israel.

It’s true, I write about the more mundane and less controversial events and happenings that I encounter. And I must admit that I live a very pleasant and relatively uneventful life at the heart of one of the must turbulent regions of the world at a particularly chaotic time in its pretty chaotic history.

I apologise in advance if what comes next sounds complacent and anodyne, but that is the nature of bourgeois life anywhere in the world. When I graduated from a rather left-wing university in England some fifty years ago the last thing in the world that I wanted was to join the ranks of those who had undergone what we dismissively called ‘embourgeoisiment,’ and so I emigrated to Israel. But becoming bourgeois, sadly, is generally what tends to happen to anyone who marries and has children. Acquiring property is necessary in order to put a roof over your child’s head, gaining an education is necessary in order to get a job and put food in your child’s mouth, and the process is more or less inevitable.

In the initial stages of our life as a family my husband and I worked and studied, brought up three children and struggled to pay the mortgage and put food on the table. Gradually, however, the economic situation in Israel improved, and so did our own. Today, as a retired couple, we enjoy the benefits of the national health system, private and state pensions and an extensive circle of relatives, friends and acquaintances, most of whom enjoy material circumstances that are more or less like our own. At last night’s sold-out concert of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra we heard Joshua Bell playing Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole on the Stradivarius violin once owned by the orchestra’s founder, Bronislav Huberman. The entire experience was heavenly.

The Israel I live in is one in which people enjoy a comfortable standard of living, consume cultural events, enjoy an active social life and on the whole are not beset by financial worries. We have almost all lived through wars, have children and grandchildren and are not unaware of what is happening around us. Many of my Sabra contemporaries have served in the army, though I myself have not, and my children and grandchildren have and still do. We tend to avoid discussing politics when we meet as the subject is either too boring and depressing or might arouse tension (not good for our blood pressure). Politicians all over the world, including in Israel, tend not to be models of probity, and it is disingenuous to expect anything else.

I know there are problems in Israel, but I accept my inability to do anything about them. I’m still waiting for someone to show me a country that has no problems. We vote when the elections come round but have stopped going to political demonstrations, which anyway tend to be futile. Those demonstrations in which I participated in my youth achieved either nothing or the opposite of what I desired. The overall situation in Israel and the Middle East is too complex for me to determine what is the best solution. Once I thought that a two-state solution would resolve matters, but today that does not seem to be feasible. In order for that to be a viable solution a great many things would have to change on all sides.

That’s my two-pennies’ worth, for what it’s worth, and I would suggest that anyone seeking a more sensationalist text and rabid opinions should look elsewhere. I feel that by living and writing in Israel I am making my own small contribution to the present and future of the Jewish people. My Israel is a place where life is pleasant and the sunshine is plentiful. That probably explains why my mood is sanguine and my opinions bland.

This article first appeared as ‘Letter from Israel’ in the AJR Journal.